(Wherein I go ahead and say that it’s okay not to have a blog. Because a blog written badly is worse than having no blog at all.)
In the wee hours this morning, when I was awake before I wanted to be, I lay very still in bed and scrolled through Facebook on my phone. Which is where I found a link, and I followed that link, and now that I’ve had a cup of coffee I’m ready to explain to you why I got out of bed so annoyed today.
I got out of bed annoyed today because one of the first things I read this morning was a sentence containing: “the relationships with our now and future users.” These words were cushioned inside a sentence explaining what factors Hootsuite considered when rebranding.
That’s not how you use that word, now.
I couldn’t keep reading after that. I just couldn’t. I could tell this was supposed to be an important blog post. Rebranding is a tough thing, and selling a new brand to an audience of dedicated users can be very challenging. People don’t like change. Rebranding is change. This post is an announcement, an explanation, an argument, a celebration. But I couldn’t read it. Our now users?!?
Every company has a blog. Tiny or huge, local or multinational, every company has one. Some use their blog to “build community”, some to market their products, some to post press releases. But whatever the purpose or use of a company blog, I don’t get the impression that all companies – especially, ironically, social media companies – go out of their way to make sure their bloggers are good writers.
Blogging = writing.
This is simply a truth. And good writing is important. Not only does good writing lead readers to establish an impression that the company is good at what it does, it also, you know, clearly conveys the ideas the company wants to convey.
Bad writing reflects terribly on companies. And bad writing inserts a lot of noise into a company’s message.
Sure, I’m thinking mostly about big companies as I let off the steam of my morning annoyance, but the same thing goes for even the tiniest business. If you have a blog, that blog is made up of writing, even if it’s mostly pictures with just a few captions.
You don’t need to be a master writer. But you do need to do it not badly.
And if you can’t do it not badly, then it’s okay not to have a blog.
It’s okay.
Better not to have one than to have one that does you no good.
I just screamed out “YES!” when I read the part about social media companies having good writers. I’m still amazed by some of these social media writers who can’t spell or know how to use spell check, but most importantly don’t know the difference between ‘you’re’ and ‘your’ amongst other words. For some reason, that really irks me.